By Emily Smith van Beek
Sustainability Blogger
Did you know Friday, March 22 is World Water Day? Since the 1950s, global water consumption has tripled, yet in so many areas around the globe it is so hard to access clean and safe drinking water. Over one billion people globally do not have access to safe drinking water. Canada has twenty-one percent of the world’s natural water sources, but we take advantage of that. We are over-consumers of the bottled water market. How can we combat our over usage and reduce our carbon footprint? Right here at Loyalist, we are taking steps in the right direction by installing new water hydration stations around campus.
To date, fifteen water filtration/ drinking stations have been installed on campus. The stations provide a quick and convenient way to reduce our dependency on disposable plastic water bottles and help preserve the environment. Students and staff are already helping make a difference on campus. The innovative counter on each station encourages and motivates users to keep up the good work by counting the number of disposable plastic bottles that have been averted from landfills. So far we have eliminated more than 600,000 plastic bottles. Something to be proud of!
We as consumers are lured into the idea that bottled water is better for us than our own drinking water. Companies like Fiji, Vase, Dasani, etc, tempt us with pictures of freshwater spring and fancy bottles. Labels often use words like ‘triple distilled through reverse osmosis’. The reality is much of that water comes from the same place you get the water from your tap, only bottled and with a higher price tag.
The benefits of the water hydration stations at Loyalist are endless. To begin with, they are free and produce filtered water three times faster than traditional fountains.
So if you’re thirsty, c’mon and fill up at a station near you!
Emily